Poinsettias with Paint and Glitter

3/19/2026

This is my second blog about poinsettias because after I moved from California to Missouri I discovered that I could actually keep them outside all summer. In 2025 I planted several poinsettias in a shade location where they only got a little tiny bit of sun in the late afternoon. Only one of them survived and you can see that one here in my first blog.

They can also grow outside in California and sometimes even in San Francisco. However, they don’t like the persistently cold foggy conditions, and they prefer warm moist air. This makes the Midwest an ideal growing environment for a poinsettia which originated in Mexico and Central America.

This year 2026 I wanted to do something different, so I bought a large number of poinsettias the day after Christmas. They go on sale for only $0.99 each at Schnuck’s Grocery Store. I decided to buy some of them with painted leaves and some of them with natural leaves to see if the paint and glitter caused any sort of issues with the plants. I also purchased one with artificial snow. All of the smaller poinsettias died of root rot including the one with snow.

I decided to leave the bracts (which look like flowers) upon the plant because I found that it’s not detrimental to leave them on. But you could actually remove the flowers because there’s no point in the plant wasting its energy making seeds. I discovered that sometimes the bracts can actually begin to generate chlorophyll over time. I noticed some of the bracts turning slightly green especially on the older poinsettias.

The reason I had an extremely low survival rate is I didn’t do the following I planted the poinsettias outside too early; then we had an unexpected snow in May. I had not yet transplanted them before I transplanted them outside so the pots were too small.

This year I transplanted all of the poinsettias into larger pots using a mix of coconut core and perlite. The original poinsettias were packed in 100% peat moss which is not good for the roots ability to breathe.

I’m going to slowly introduce them to the outside conditions to acclimate them. I’ve been putting the poinsettias outside in the shade when the weather is warmer than 60° Fahrenheit.

For the experiment I purchased two plants that are identical except one of them has gold paint on the leaves. Today I’m going to start to measure their growth. They seem to be on an equal playing field now. I don’t see new growth on either one of these plants. Once I slowly acclimate them I will either leave them in pots and bring them in when it gets really hot or I might plant some of them in the ground.

For the experiment I intend to keep two of them under equal conditions to see if the gold paint is actually an impediment the production of new leaves. I imagine that it would be because the chlorophyll is blocked by the paint.

7/5/2026

Today I decided that both of the poinsettias had grown enough new leaves. I decided to trim away the older leaves and the bracts.

The poinsettia that did not have the paint and the glitter showed itself to be much healthier. The poinsettia that had gold paint lost many branches during the trimming because I noticed the branches were cracked and unhealthy. I attribute this either to toxicity caused by the paint or a lack of the ability to produce chlorophyll which had been blocked by the paint and glitter. I carefully removed all the painted leaves and threw them in the trash because they could not be composted due to possible contaminants. In conclusion, paint and glitter is harmful to the poinsettia but not fatal.